


Boundaries

by x4ashes4ashes



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kerry is a possessive little psycho, You: No one asked for this and no one wants it. Me: That’s my specialty., canon compliant with season 1, i corrupt every fandom i step foot in, im not even sorry, not really but a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 12:42:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13501872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x4ashes4ashes/pseuds/x4ashes4ashes
Summary: It’s the non-platonic Cary/Kerry fic that none of you have been waiting for!





	Boundaries

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place somehow in the nonstop mayhem of season 1.
> 
> I said this was canon compliant but there is actually one small AU aspect that has to do with the bathtub/shower situation at Summerland.

Kerry let the alarm sound for an additional ten seconds before breaking her hand free and slamming it down on the snooze button. She let her arm fall back and felt a slight tingle as it was reabsorbed, as unsure as ever whether only she had felt it or they both had.

 

Cary apologized drowsily, and she wished she had a way of expressing an eye roll to him. But he probably already knew what expression would be on her face. “Are you getting up?” she demanded.

 

He murmured a negative as he shifted onto his side, facing the edge of the bed and the rest of the room. “Not quite yet.”

 

She could feel it too - that heavy, thousand-ton weight of exhaustion trying to drag him back to sleep. His eyes fluttered open for a second and stung and he shut them quickly. Cary didn’t struggle back against that force, as she felt inclined to do. He submitted.

 

Releasing an annoyed sigh, Kerry rolled out of him and into the vacant part of the double bed. The first seconds of emersion were always uncomfortable, shocking. She wondered if it was like being born. There was a part of her that wanted to scream as cold air entered her lungs – her _own_ lungs – and a part of her that wanted to go right back inside.

 

She preferred vertical separations – stepping out of him like one walks out a door (...well, not _quite_ like that) – but this time wasn’t so bad. For a moment she lied there, next to him and under the covers, staring up at the white ceiling and pondering the somewhat unfamiliar experience of being in bed. She knew it daily through _him_ , of course, but it wasn’t the kind of thing she would bother being outside for. Sleeping was a waste of time for someone like her. A waste of life. But sometimes just lying in bed for a few minutes was nice. Not so much when she was alone, but next to Cary. If she had been dressed more comfortably, she would have snuggled up to him. It wasn’t something they did very often - cuddling. But sometimes. When she was in the rare mood for it. The bed was big enough to hold them both.

 

As it was, she was still in her field outfit, and the boots and long coat interfered awkwardly as she clambered out of the covers. He wouldn’t be very happy about the boots in the sheets, not that it was her fault. She hoped he wouldn’t notice, but of course he did, his eyes having battled their way open. He didn’t say anything, the disapproval was limited to his face. As often as they were forced to communicate verbally, she also knew everything he didn’t say, everything he said with his eyebrows and eyes and the turn of his lips. Even without the facial cues, she usually knew. She gave him a sheepish smile, the one he couldn’t resist.

 

“You’ll check the-“

 

“Yes,” she answered. His experiment, probably the reason why he had set the alarm in the first place.

 

“And you’ll make sure the-“

 

“Yes.”

 

She was itching to train, so she shed the coat and tossed it onto the armchair. He tutted in objection and she glared at him rebelliously this time and didn’t move the coat.

 

The closet was too small for their needs – as nice as Summerland was, quarters for one were a little cramped when you were one and a half if not two. She had her side, he had his. It had always been that way. One closet. Even in that apartment 30 and some odd years ago that had a closet to spare, they had still shared the one in the bedroom – his side, her side.

 

She pulled out a tank top and a pair of sweatpants and set them down on the end of the bed.

 

“You need another hobby,” he commented, eyeing the clothing she had chosen as she moved in front of him.

 

“I like fighting.”

 

“ _I know_.”

 

When she got hurt he paid the price but he kept his complaints to a self-sacrificial minimum. He wanted her to live as full of a life as she could. To live her own life, if that’s what she wanted. To choose for herself the way she would if she was…normal. If she didn’t have to worry about how it would affect him.

 

Kerry stripped down. He was looking right at her, the way you look right at someone when you’re talking to them, but he wasn’t _watching_. Or maybe he was, a little, behind an unreadable gaze. She didn’t mind. She was even glad, maybe. She could have changed in the bathroom, near the closet, she could have turned her back to him. She didn’t.

 

“I meant, in addition,” he explained. “Something _in addition_ to fighting.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Painting?” He presented it in an ambiguous tone, like it might have been a joke, but also might not have been a joke.

 

Kerry scoffed.

 

“It was only a suggestion.”

 

“Noted,” she replied.

 

She knew he was trying to help her, but it felt like a criticism. Like he was looking at her life and finding it lacking. They both needed things that were their own, and she had something, but he felt like what she had wasn’t enough. He always said the same thing: “I want you to live a full life.” But who said her life wasn’t full? That wasn’t how she saw it: _unfilled_. For whose sake was he pushing her away? He couldn't help but hear her, but sometimes he didn't _listen_.

 

The punching bag took the full brunt of her frustration. Sometimes she wondered if they actually had less in common than a typical pair of siblings (or married couple) despite their...situation. Because he didn’t understand what it was like to be the one who was - in a sense - subordinate. He always assumed that there was a part of her that resented him – what he couldn’t grasp was that her small realm of independence satisfied her. And the parts of her life that she shared with him – the parts of her life that he saw as predominantly _his_ – weren’t at all unsatisfying.

 

Just when her indignation was reaching its peak she always remembered that he was just afraid - afraid she couldn’t survive if he died - and he just wanted to know she was set up to live on her own if that's what happened.

 

Maybe she could, but she wouldn’t want to.

 

///

 

Cary caught her looking at herself in the bathroom mirror after they took in Sydney.

 

“You don’t need to be jealous. You’re very pretty,” he reassured her. “You're really...quite beautiful,” he added, more meaningfully. It _didn’t_ reassure her. She hadn’t been jealous until he said that, since he seemed to think that Sydney was so beautiful she would immediately make all women in her vicinity jealous. He had every right to find Sydney pretty...but maybe not quite _that_ pretty.

 

It was really Sydney’s femininity – or Kerry’s own lack of it – that she had been pondering. Not with distress – more with curiosity. She had had decades to figure out who she was. This is who she was.

 

“ _I’m not jealous_ ,” she declared emphatically. She wasn’t as feminine in disposition as she might have been (not that she minded), but she had finally grown out of the angular, boxy, gangly adolescent she had been for so long. She was still skinny – well, athletically so (and she preferred the term “lean”) – but curvy too, in certain spots. Even the sports bra couldn’t completely suppress her developed chest. She had never really taken the time to notice that she was fully grown, even though she had been for some time. She didn’t know how old she was, how old her body was. She wasn’t a teenager. This body was older than that.

 

“You’re finally a woman,” Cary said, finding her thoughts the way he always seemed to do. “And now I’m an old man.”

 

Kerry still stung from the jealousy remark, so she bit back her instinctive words of consolation. She didn’t tell him that as often as she jokingly called him ‘old man’, she didn’t think of him that way. And he wasn’t that old, really. She never looked at him and thought, _he’s old now_. And having lived for just as many years as he had lived (in one way or another), it didn’t seem like such a long time.

 

She pivoted in front of the mirror, checking out the back of her calves, her shoulders, her ass. She looked good for her age.

 

Cary didn’t leave. He followed the movements of her reflection, transfixed.

 

He sounded wistful, when he said it. _You’re finally a woman, and now I’m an old man_. Nostalgia, and that same morbid concern. And maybe something else...

 

Their eyes met in the mirror, and he turned and walked out.

 

///

 

“I’m afraid of what she’ll do to have him back,” Cary said. He might have been talking about Sydney and David, but Kerry knew he was referring to Melanie and Oliver.

 

“You don’t want him back,” Kerry posited.

 

“That’s not true. I just-I worry. Sometimes he’s not entirely…reasonable.”

 

Kerry liked Oliver. She missed him, even if he didn’t always mind his own business. He had once – impertinently - told her that she wore Cary as a protective shell. Maybe he was right. Maybe that was just fine with her. No one could look in from the outside and understand her and Cary’s relationship, and they especially couldn't judge it. Oliver had insight, though. He had also told her that he had debates with himself, wondering which one of them needed the other more. He said, “Cary sees his life as a service for you. But you wouldn’t want to live without him, even if you could.”

 

“He’s smart. We need him,” Kerry said to Cary, pulling up the memory and threading it through her mind.

 

“I would never get in the way of bringing him back, unless the method wasn’t worth the risk.” Kerry trusted him to know what was and wasn’t worth the risk. And she’d be there, with an opinion of her own.

 

They were in the bath. Or Cary was, anyway. She wasn’t really paying attention. She only noticed how humid the air was, how much harder it was to breathe. But, in a nice way.

 

“She really loves him,” Kerry remarked, meditating on the concept. “How long has he been gone?” Kerry had an unreliable sense of the passage of time, she had learned to ask rather than assume she could calculate the answer.

 

“It’s been twenty years.” He sighed. “She deserves to have him back. I want that for her. And I miss him too, I do.”

 

Kerry probed lightly for hints of jealousy. Melanie was around their age, and she and Cary spent lots of time together. Did Cary have any interest in Melanie for himself? Or, perhaps, did he want something like what Melanie and Oliver had?

 

Cary had had one serious romantic relationship, in college. That was many years ago, but Kerry still felt the pain of it acutely. Her name had been Valerie and she had been in one of his post-graduate classes. They worked on a group project together and hit it off. Cary introduced Kerry as his cousin, and said he was her guardian. Valerie always felt bad that she could never win the girl over. Kerry wasn’t proud of the way she had behaved towards her. Fiercely territorial, she had chosen to remain inside of Cary most of the time - unless he kicked her out so he could be intimate with Valerie - spying and complaining and heckling until Cary broke things off. She had made it clear that she would never accept Valerie into their lives.

 

Kerry had sabotaged his chance at love, and he had never taken another. He always tiptoed around the subject, assuming she felt terribly guilty about it. She did… _a little_. But she didn’t _regret_ it. She might have done worse to get rid of Valerie, if it had been necessary.

 

She had looked about 12 then, around the time of Valerie, and had been terribly frustrated by her youthful appearance, which left her quite incapable of doing anything interesting on her own, while Cary’s life seemed to be speeding by. She wanted to know what a kiss felt like and she asked Cary to kiss her. She didn’t want anyone else to do it. She had felt like it didn't _make sense_ for anyone else to do it. He refused, and told her a kiss from him wouldn’t answer her question. He told her, after she begged, that he would kiss her when she was older, if no one else had and she still wanted him to. She reminded him how long it took her to get “older” but he didn’t budge. By the time she finally _was_ older, it didn’t feel right to ask again.

 

She went to the mall and bought a dress. Then she sneaked into a dance at the local high school. She found one of the guys who was standing against the wall by himself drinking too much punch and asked him to dance. It didn’t take long - he was receptive to the kiss by the time the song was over. It was all so easy when you didn’t really care. That kiss didn’t feel like the answer to her question either. She never saw that boy again - Kerry didn’t even remember his name. Cary had been right: you had to really want to kiss someone for it to feel the way it was supposed to.

 

A kiss had seemed like a major milestone at the time: a check mark on the long list of things that Cary had done that she technically never had. But she wasn’t troubled by those things anymore. The kind of action Kerry usually craved was of the combat kind. She usually thought about sex like she thought about eating and sleeping – it wasn’t for her. Cary seemed relieved, and she secretly hoped it was the same kind of possessiveness that she had felt towards him when Valerie happened, but maybe he was being protective, or maybe he just didn’t want their lives to change.

 

The idea of a boyfriend seemed silly now, with all that was going on. War. But she wasn’t disappointed. Sydney and David, Melanie and Oliver – they could never be as close as Kerry was to Cary. Kerry was born inside of her soulmate, souls touching, permanently bonded.

 

“I agree with Melanie, I think David _is_ the key to freeing Oliver,” Cary continued. “But he’s unpredictable. We could be setting off an atomic bomb.” Kerry didn’t like unpredictable. Cary was cautious too, but had the mind of a scientist. If there was a chance to learn, he was interested, not that he wasn't responsible. He was eminently responsible. He grew quiet, his thoughts consumed with trials and tests and stimuli.

 

“The water’s getting cold,” she complained, interrupting.

 

He was silent for a beat, surprised. “I didn’t realize you were quite so… _here_.” She hadn’t been, but she was now, feeling the chill above the surface of the lukewarm water and smelling the mint-scented soap. He reached over and switched on the drain, then turned on the faucet to run more hot water into the tub and she nearly moaned in pleasure at the sensation as the warmth curled up his – _their_ – ankle.

 

Traditionally, showering was private time. On occasion she had to do it for herself anyway, and she knew why he liked to be alone in there. It was the kind of habit that declined with age, but she assumed he still did it sometimes, if not as often as he used to. Baths were a little different. He didn’t take them very often (only when he was stressed) and he was used to her sometimes sticking around. He mentioned once to her that he felt a little uncomfortable being naked around her, but she pointed out that he – _they_ \- were naked all the time under his clothes and he couldn’t argue with that.

 

Maybe they shouldn’t be shy around each other, or embarrassed, or uncertain, but they were, sometimes. As much as their situation had pushed them towards uniformity, they were different. They weren’t one, they were two. She had always wondered if they would reach a point when there was nothing left to be uncomfortable about – when they would know each other so well and so perfectly and so indifferently that it would be a completed puzzle, each piece a piece of them – their desires, their tastes, their perceptions, their sensations, their opinions. This hadn’t happened yet. She didn’t think it ever would. But that was OK. She no longer wanted it. This was not an idealized version – it was real and it was messy and it was better.

 

“Do you want me to go away?” Kerry asked him.

 

“Of course not.”

 

She reveled a little, in hearing him say it. How much he meant it. She took him for granted, sometimes, of course, the way one does family, the way one does one’s arm or foot. But not always. Sometimes she let herself feel all of the love, every last swell of love and connection and dependency.

 

She popped free of Cary to the sound of displaced water crashing to the floor, and found herself resting on top of him, her long hair swaying a little in the faint remaining waves. Her body was oriented towards him – she could do that, when she wanted to. She could come out that way. He gaped at her, but she didn’t immediately meet his eyes. She straddled his waist so that she could push up onto her knees and she swiveled briefly away from him and behind her to turn off the faucet. Kerry continued to ignore his reaction as she – a little anxiously - lifted her top and bra up and over her head and then tossed them dramatically away from the tub.

 

She lowered herself back down, resting her forearms on the sides of the tub, and her hair danced across his chest as she slid up him until she was poised above his head. He stared, and finally she moved her gaze to level with his and stared back, and his expression of shock shifted into one of discernment and curiosity.

 

She was aware of a thousand sensations – the wet ends of her hair hanging like a veil across her bare breasts; the clinging, sticky weight of her soaked and submerged pants; the heady, steamy air moving into her lungs; Cary’s petrified body beneath her; and her own hammering heart.

 

She dropped down enough to plant a kiss on his mouth, bringing his ajar lips closed with hers and then parting them again in the way she chose. He didn’t resist, but didn’t reciprocate. He was just as speechless when she pulled away as he had been before, but she was less nervous than she thought she would be, undiscouraged by his lack of return. Kissing him seemed right, felt _right_. There was a confidence that came from that.

 

Was this what a kiss was like? When you really wanted to kiss someone?

 

“Kerry…” he whispered, shaking his head slightly.

 

She ignored his reservations, his quiet little protest, and kissed him again, more forcefully, demanding something back. There was another second of hesitation before he responded, matching movement for movement, and she could feel him – if only temporarily – letting go of what had earlier restrained him.

 

The thrill of her skin against his was almost entirely new and she wanted him to hold her tighter. She wanted him to squeeze her with two arms wrapped around her back, but she had to settle for just one, while his other hand fingered her hair timidly, occasionally reaching up a little further to massage her scalp and glean soft moans from her.

 

She withdrew unhurriedly, when it felt natural, and rolled over to lie back against his chest with a contented sigh. She remained until the water was nearly gone and then merged with Cary again.

 

“I suppose I’ll be cleaning that up,” he mused as he climbed out of the bath, glancing down at the puddles she had displaced onto the floor.

 

“It’s just a little water,” she replied.

 

Cary wrapped a towel around his waist. He picked up his glasses from the counter, wiped off the fog, put them on and looked into the mirror. “You can’t just go and change everything.”

 

For once, Kerry wasn’t sure who he was speaking to – her or himself.

 

///

 

They needed her in the field the next day. She materialized, without thinking, in front of the whole group - with nothing on top and soaking wet. Half of their curious, confused looks went towards Cary, who blushed in embarrassment. Kerry crossed her arms to hide her chest and put on a cool mask of indifference. She took her time going back to their room to throw on some clothes, as if the slower she walked the more dignity she got back.

 

“I-I didn’t realize you two were…” Melanie asked.

 

“...We aren’t,” Cary answered her, a little unconvincingly. Kerry heard the exchange as she left, and she wasn’t sure she approved of Cary’s reply. _Maybe we are_ , she thought. What was the difference, really? For the two of them?

 

She and Cary exchanged looks as she was about to depart with Ptonomy and Sydney. There were all the usual things – worry, love, the anxiety of separation – and just a hint of unfinished business.

 

But then he danced a little jig, to make her laugh.

 

///

 

She was not afraid of what had happened between them – what she had _done_. Her relationship with Cary already transcended any distinction between whether they kissed each other or if they didn't. She didn't know exactly what she wanted for their future, only that she wanted more of what that moment had been. She didn't want it remembered as some strange and self-contained interlude, a freak anomaly.

 

But she didn't think that Cary thought of it that way.

 

The unfinished business had to remain unfinished after she was beaten and shot and comatose. There was plenty else going on too – with David, with the divisions. But there was finally a second to stop, and Cary was on the mend. Kerry returned to their room to a closed bathroom door and the sound of running water. After her injuries - their injuries - _his_ injuries - he had avoided showering because of the pain. It was easier to just not bother. She didn't blame him but was glad he had finally decided to brave it. She was ready to be back inside of him, even with the aches and throbs and little agonies. But maybe it could wait a little while longer…

 

Kerry jettisoned her clothes into an untidy heap that Cary would hate and moved stealthily for the bathroom. He didn’t notice her open the bathroom door but responded to the rush of cold air as she entered the shower. He stepped out of the stream of water and opened his eyes slowly, already knowing what he would see before him.

 

She gave him a commanding inclination of her head, stopping whatever he had been about to say in its tracks.

 

The sight of the purples bruises across his face stole her breath, like they did every time she saw them - a mix of feeling guilty for his suffering – suffering that belonged to _her_ \- and remembering the trauma of when she had received them. He had no choice, they were his burden to bear now. But he would have taken them by choice, for her. Just as she would have taken them back, if she could have.

 

“The bath was nice, right?’ she asked, advancing on him.

 

Cary squirmed uncomfortably, at the question and at her nakedness. Eventually he conceded the point, with a downward glance at her feet: “…Er-Yes, it was. It was…nice. But this is…It’s…Well, I’m not entirely sure that it’s a good idea. We should have…boundaries.”

 

“There are no boundaries,” she said. “We have no boundaries.” She demonstrated her point by moving so close to him that he couldn't be sure she wasn't trying to go back inside.

 

“But-“

 

“We don’t need to try to be normal. We’re not normal. The only thing we need to be is ourselves. Just because this wasn’t us yesterday doesn’t mean it’s not us tomorrow.”

 

“You make a very good point,” he acknowledged, raggedly, as she took his anticipatory erection firmly into her hand. He was embarrassed but he didn't turn away from her.

 

“What if we don’t have that much time left? These are dangerous days. We're at war. Look at what already happened. Do you really want to say no to this, worried about some future that may not even come about?”

 

“I-“

 

“I already know what you’re worried about,” she assured him. And she did. He was worried they would end up fighting. He was worried it would create distance between them. He was worried she would break his heart. He was probably even worried she would end up pregnant somehow and what would happen then? She put her other hand on his heart. “Nothing has ever come between us. And nothing ever will.”

 

She couldn’t help but think of Valerie, and wondered if she came to his mind too. Kerry began gently stroking him.

 

“Kerry, don’t,” he said weakly.

 

She stopped. “Let me do this for you. I can tell you want to and you’re in too much pain to do it yourself. Besides...it’s my fault you’re alone. All of it is my fault.”

 

“You know I don’t think of it that way.” He swallowed and nodded at her, giving her the assent she was waiting for. “And I’m not alone.”

 

She smiled at him. “But it’s not the same.”

 

“No. It’s better,” he replied, slightly strangled by pleasure.

 

He was embarrassed again, after it was over. But she kissed him and then he held her, firm against his chest in a lingering embrace under the hot water until she popped back inside and then it felt normal again, normal and good.

 

///

 

Even though Oliver was missing, it felt like the first time they could really breathe since before they went into the astral plane. Her fear for Cary had chased all of the anger right out of her, and as soon as they were done hugging she fused back with Cary and felt restored, even reeling as they both were from when Farouk – in _her_ body - had kicked him.

 

It felt like being home again, being back inside him. In reality it had only been a little while – less than what could accurately be described as “days' – but it felt like much longer than that, like a kind of eternity. She had resisted, in her anger, her every instinct and impulse to return to him.

 

It was a few hours before they had a chance to go back to their room. Nothing ever let up. He apologized again for abandoning her in that fake mental hospital, that hellscape - and she told him that she knew he really hadn’t. “I’ve never felt alone, like that before. Or helpless. Maybe I was just angry at _myself_ \- for how I reacted.”

 

“I wish I could hold your hand right now,” Cary said. “That was a terrible place. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because it stole our connection from us. It disembodied us - detached us.”

 

“Yeah, it really sucked,” Kerry echoed.

 

He laughed.

 

“Farouk made me hurt you,” she said softly.

 

“It’s OK.”

 

“No, it doesn’t feel OK.” She hurt him all the time, though. This she knew. Every bad thing that happened to her body – injuries, the need for sustenance and care, aging – he took all of it unto himself. She thought that she protected him. But he protected her just as much.

 

He was quiet, and she could tell he was thinking about their still unfinished business. She was in no hurry to separate from him after all their time apart. There was a next step to what they had begun, and all sorts of things to explore after that – they'll be ready for it, but not right then. And whatever happened next – it didn't matter, because nothing had ever come between them, and nothing ever would.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe that this turned out to be one of my more sexually-explicit fics when I don't even really care that much about the sexual side of this ship. I just wanted it to be clear that there isn't room for anyone else in this relationship and they don't need anyone else and that – in this fic anyway – it's romantic, not platonic. But like fic!Kerry said: their relationship transcends those kinds of distinctions anyway.
> 
> I actually set out to write this with Kerry/Cary in an already-established, long-running/long-term semi-sexual relationship but this happened instead.


End file.
